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The Last Normal Year Was 1345

2026-11-03 · letter vlog · John · 6:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic, self promotion, fundraising ask, civic or action cta

Answering Hank's case for 2016, John argues that the last normal year was 1345: life had long been much the same, until the Black Death killed a third to half of the people of North Africa, Europe and Asia and set off changes that still make the world weird; 2016, with fewer than 4% of children dying before five, was in no way normal.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Answering Hank's video: the last normal year was 1345, not 2016

  • ★★★ Disagreeing with Hank, John says the last normal year in human history was 1345, not 2016. — 00:00:00 · Hank Green

    “the last normal year in human history was not 2016, it was 1345”

  • ★★ John says that in the late Middle Ages life was more or less normal, meaning approximately as it always had been. — 00:00:00

  • ★★ John says that in 1345 there were no potatoes or yams in Afro-Eurasia and no horses or smallpox viruses in the Americas, as there never had been. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Life in 1345: no potatoes in Afro-Eurasia, child deaths, travel, cities, farmers, empires and war; 1345 happened earlier today

  • ★★ John says that in 1345, whether born in the Americas or Afro-Eurasia, a person had at least a 40% chance of dying before their fifth birthday. — 00:00:29 · child mortality
  • ★★ John says people in 1345 did not expect their children's lives to be longer, healthier or richer than their own. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says that in 1345, as for many thousands of years, the fastest a human could travel was as fast as a horse carrying a human, or as fast as the wind could blow a boat. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says that in 1345 some people lived in small hunter-gatherer communities of a few dozen people, and many were farmers, most of whom paid part of the harvest to the lord or leader controlling their land. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says London in 1345 had a population of around 80,000, about the size of Hank's hometown of Missoula, Montana today. — 00:00:58 · London, Missoula, Montana
  • ★★ John says many people in 1345 lived under empires: the Kongo Kingdom in Central Africa was rising and the Mali Empire in West Africa was near its peak. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says the Mongol Empire was in decline in 1345, but empires had long been rising and falling. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says war was also routine in 1345, like the Hundred Years' War that was really getting going between England and France that year. — 00:01:27 · England
  • ★★ John says modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years. — 00:01:27

  • ★★★ John says 1345 was not really long ago: if human history began on January 1st and today were December 31st at 11:59 p.m., 1345 happened earlier today. — 00:01:27

    “1345 happened earlier today”

00:01:57 — Notre Dame and adobe towns; things were normal until 1346

  • ★★ John says people were doing cool things in 1345: the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was finished that year, and multi-story adobe towns were rising in the Americas. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ John says that in life expectancy, working conditions and available resources things were pretty normal in 1345, and then in 1346 they got very, very permanently weird. — 00:01:57

00:02:26 — The Awesome Socks Club open for two weeks, its profit for the Maternal Center of Excellence

00:02:52 — The Black Death: eruption, rodents and plague; the toll; collapse of the social order; wages, rents and the end of feudalism

  • ★★ John asks viewers to get an Awesome Socks Club subscription now or give one as a gift at good.store. — 00:02:52 · Awesome Socks Club, Good Store
  • ★★ John says that around this time there was probably a big volcanic eruption that cooled the planet, causing bad harvests and malnutrition that left people more vulnerable to infectious disease. (hedged) — 00:02:52
  • ★★ John says the eruption may also have driven rodents carrying Yersinia pestis out of their dying grasslands into areas with many more humans. (hedged) — 00:02:52
  • ★★ John says the best current guess is that the rodent migration led to millions of people beginning to die of plague in 1346. (hedged) — 00:03:21
  • ★★★ John says infectious disease outbreaks were common, but this one was not normal: within seven years between a third and half of all people in North Africa, Europe and Asia were dead. — 00:03:21 · Europe
  • ★★ John calls the Black Death truly apocalyptic: an Irish monk writing about the plague left extra parchment when he fell ill, so that others could continue his work if anyone survived. — 00:03:21
  • ★★★ John says the shock of the Black Death can hardly be overstated: it killed untold millions and also collapsed the social order, as bells stopped ringing for the dead and family members abandoned each other. — 00:03:50
  • ★★ John says plague victims usually died within a week of infection, and in Florence 80% of all people died in a four-month period. — 00:04:19
  • ★★★ John says estimates of the Black Death's total dead range from 75 million to 200 million, when the total human population was around 400 million. — 00:04:19
  • ★★ John says the Black Death made things noticeably not normal for a very long time, and some historians would argue it still makes the world not normal. — 00:04:19
  • ★★ John says some historians argue the Black Death helped fuel, though it did not cause, the Renaissance in Italy, by turning people's focus to earthly matters like disease and the human body. — 00:04:19
  • ★★ John says that after the Black Death wages soared because fewer people were left to work, inflation went up, and rents collapsed, sometimes by up to 80%. — 00:04:49
  • ★★ John says peasants gained power from the limited supply of labor after the Black Death, which in the end helped fuel the end of feudalism. — 00:04:49
  • ★★ John says the total human population took about 200 years to recover from the Black Death. — 00:04:49

00:05:18 — The world still weird from the Black Death; 1491; 2016 was in no way a normal year

  • ★★ John says that by then the world was weird in ways it still is: the Columbian Exchange had joined Afro-Eurasia and the Americas, causing the Great Dying, and there were guns, printing presses, the Reformation, early colonialism and the Scientific Revolution. — 00:05:18
  • ★★★ John says the Black Death did not directly cause these changes, but it shifted the experience of being human in profound and lasting ways. — 00:05:18
  • ★★ John says other last normal years can be cited, 1491 being the most compelling candidate in his opinion. — 00:05:18
  • ★★★ John says the only thing he can say for sure is that 2016 was in no way a normal year: it is not normal for fewer than 4% of children to die before the age of five. — 00:05:47 · child mortality, progress
  • ★★ John says it is not normal for people to have access to clean water, recorded music or lighting at night. — 00:05:47
  • ★★★ John says that here, at 11:59 p.m. on December 31st of human history, we need to remember how radically different earlier today was. — 00:05:47
  • ★★ John says that if we live another 681 years the world will be very different again; some of those changes will be down to forces beyond our control, but many will not. — 00:05:47

00:06:16 — Very little in history is inevitable; sign-off; socks and a reminder to vote

  • ★★★ John quotes Margaret Atwood that very little in history is inevitable, and says we would do well to remember it. — 00:06:16 · historical determinism

    “very little in history is inevitable”

  • ★★ In a postscript on election day (3 November 2026), John tells Americans to vote. — 00:06:16

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank is right that there is never a normal year, but things in 1345 CE were fairly similar to things in 1345 BCE. — video description · Hank Green
  • ★★ The description says everything started to get weird when almost half of humans died. — video description
  • ★★ To a viewer comment that one could make a strong case for 12,000 BCE, John replies that you would have to pick a year, and agriculture emerged slowly, and independently, over time. — creator comment
  • ★ In a comment John admits a mistake a viewer pointed out in the video. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Black Death · child mortality · historical determinism · normality

Also: People: Margaret Atwood

Projects: Awesome Socks Club · Good Store

Organizations: Maternal Center of Excellence

Concepts: colonialism · feudalism · horse · Hunter-gatherer · infectious disease · inflation · life expectancy · malnutrition · Plague (disease) · potato (concept) · printing press · progress · smallpox · sound recording · Yersinia pestis

Places: Afro-Eurasia · Americas · Asia · England · Europe · Florence · France · Italy · Kingdom of Kongo · London · Mali Empire · Missoula, Montana · Mongol Empire · Notre-Dame de Paris · Sierra Leone

Events: Columbian exchange · Great Dying of the Americas · Hundred Years' War · Reformation · Renaissance · Scientific Revolution

Only in the description or credits: agriculture

Also centred on normality: On the Separation of Conjoined Twins

Replies to

  • answers · The Last Normal Year — “In your video last week, you said 2016 was the last normal year”

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